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[juggler]

Is this possible? I'm starting to play with TwonkyMusic and Slimserver, and both of these are extensible. I just wondered if anything is possible or planned with the MC UPnP server.

To explain why... I just bought a Roku SoundBridge Radio for the bedroom. This is a beautifully put together bit of kit... almost perfect. I was extolling its virtues to my good wife and telling her it had Internet radio, etc. So her question was "can I get BBC Listen Again with it?". For those who don't know this is a web browser + Real Audio service that allows you to listen to previously broadcast BBC programmes. They also podcast in mp3 but not as much.

Turns out you can. Install Slimserver + AlienBBC on the PC, point the Roku at it and amazingly it immediately starts immitating a SqueezeBox, complete with the right-to-left panning, etc. I was gobsmacked. Click through to The News Quiz or Womens Hour or All In The Mind or whatever and it starts playing the latest broadcast episode... magic! Ok, probably means nothing to people outside the UK but it is very cool.

The only problem is with my Roku behaving like a SqueezeBox in this scenario. It's obviously running some kind of emulation so all the remote keys work differently and it just works a little bit clunky. It just doesn't fit in with the rest of the UI and confuses my good wife! Also, and this seems like a small thing but the Roku allows you to preset buttons on the top to FM radio stations, Internet radio stations or UPnP container... so, get this, I can programme it to go straight to my "bedtime" playlist at the touch of a button. Incredible! But it can't do this with anything from the Slimserver (sigh).

What I'm after is to make the AlienBBC logic work in a UPnP context so the UPnP container "The News Quiz" automatically plays the latest broadcast of that show. How good would that be?

I'll get my coat... 

Alfie.
ps. this is barely a MC discussion but I thought you'd all appreciate it anyway

[juggler]

I wonder if I'm looking at this in the wrong way. Maybe the answer is not to extend the UPnP server but to make a plugin that shows BBC streams as a channel / view scheme / whatever (not sure of correct terminology). And then hopefully the UPnP server would simply add to it's menu. Is this possible? Can the existing server serve up other Internet radio for instance?

By the way, is it possible to write a MC plugin in C#, as I'm not keen on going back to my C++ days.

Thanks, Alfie.

[juggler]

For anyone interested I am currently looking at doing this using the CyberMedia (CyberLink) Java UPnP server plus mplayer to convert the Real Media RTSP stream to WAV. So it would be outside MC entirely which is a shame but probably doesn't make much difference functionally.

Alfie.

[John Gateley]

Why not get the shows you are interested in as podcasts, instead of going this more complicated route?

j

[juggler]

Thanks for the reply - thought I was on my own there for a while

The BBC only podcast a handful of their shows compared with the number they stream using Real and RTSP on the Listen Again part of their website. I'm sure it will improve over time but hasn't really increased much over the last year.

Cheers, Alfie.

[juggler]

... and I'm learning all about UPnP and mplayer of course ...

[John Gateley]

At the moment, it seems like persuading them to go with podcasting is better than trying to adapt the UPnP protocol to do this.
Are there other sites with a similar situation? Or other situations where the modified UPnP would be better?
Podcasts are pretty much a standard, and so seem to me like the way to go...

j

[juggler]

I love the BBC but I've also worked with them and they are not open to pursuasion by mere mortals.

If I didn't have to mess about with named pipes from Java I'd probably have it working by now...

Alfie.